How to Become an International Intellectual? the Case of Thomas Piketty and ”Capital in the Twenty-First Century” (Doi: 10.2383/86982)
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Il Mulino - Rivisteweb Constantin Brissaud, Jean-Michel Chahsiche How to Become an International Intellectual? The Case of Thomas Piketty and ”Capital in the Twenty-First Century” (doi: 10.2383/86982) Sociologica (ISSN 1971-8853) Fascicolo 1, gennaio-aprile 2017 Ente di afferenza: () Copyright c by Societ`aeditrice il Mulino, Bologna. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Per altre informazioni si veda https://www.rivisteweb.it Licenza d’uso L’articolo `emesso a disposizione dell’utente in licenza per uso esclusivamente privato e personale, senza scopo di lucro e senza fini direttamente o indirettamente commerciali. Salvo quanto espressamente previsto dalla licenza d’uso Rivisteweb, `efatto divieto di riprodurre, trasmettere, distribuire o altrimenti utilizzare l’articolo, per qualsiasi scopo o fine. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Symposium / Traveling Theories. The International Circulation of Social Thinkers and Their Works, edited by Gisèle Sapiro and Marco Santoro How to Become an International Intellectual? The Case of Thomas Piketty and “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Constantin Brissaud and Jean-Michel Chahsiche doi: 10.2383/86982 Interestingly, Professor Piketty has recently assembled a group of fifteen French economists (the so-called Piketty Group) that have joined forces with a group of German economists, known as the Glienicker Gruppe, to propose institutional changes that may help resolve the Euro Crisis and return Europe on the path of stability and integration. The parallel with Capital in the Twenty-First Century is uncanny. Professor Piketty has a talent for making bold statements replete with good intentions. Just as he presents his Capital as a dagger with which to slay the abomination of unbearable inequality […] Yanis Varoufakis 2014, 32 1. Introduction As pointed out by Abram de Swaan [2007], only a handful of intellectuals have been able to overcome the borders of their home states to gain international recognition. Following the best-selling record made by Capital in the Twenty-First Century in the United States of America (US) [2014] and in France [2013], and the “Pikettymania” that ensued, it seems that Thomas Piketty has joined this club of happy-few: in March 2016, his chronicles for French newspapers Le Monde and Libération were published in the US and in the United Kingdom with significant coverage by major media outlets such as the BBC, The Guardian, Bloomberg Magazine and The New York Times. Generally, Thomas Piketty’s views on economic current affairs are frequently quoted and commentated by those same medias. Sociologica, 1/2017 - Copyright © 2017 by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. 1 Brissaud and Chahsiche, How to Become an International Intellectual? As a result of the success of his 2013 book, Piketty’s position as a public intellec- tual well beyond France’s borders raises several interesting issues for the study of the international circulation of ideas and the sociology of intellectuals. First, the case of Thomas Piketty’s Capital opens the analysis of the the multi-level internationalization of several fields that are historically structured within the frame of the nation-state, such as the academic, intellectual and political fields. These fields – in which Thomas Piketty navigates – are subject to different dynamics and paces of internationalization. With regard to politics, European or international political careers are of little appeal for political élites compared to other top national careers [Bryder 1998; Beauvallet and Michon 2010]. On the contrary, economics became a globalized professional field in the post-World War II period, and managed to impose standardized tools for economic analysis, as well as policy making [Coats 2001; Fourcade 2006]. Linked with the rise of the nation-state in the Nineteenth century, intellectual spaces still remain fiercely national [Sapiro 2009]. However, through the market of translation, international circulation of authors and ideas have long been made possible [Heil- bron 1999; Sapiro 2008], yet not without some distortion due to different national political and intellectual contexts [Bourdieu 1996 and 2002; Sapiro and Bustamante 2009], as shown by the “French Theory” label in the US [Lamont 1987; Cusset 2008] and the early importation of John Rawls’ theory of justice and analytical philosophy in France [Pudal 2004; Hauchecorne 2011]. By differentiating Piketty the economist and Piketty the intellectual – scientific position and intellectual position – the multiple levels of internationalization become visible. As an economist, Thomas Piketty had international visibility among his peers long before the publishing of Capital in the Twenty-First Century. He had also been recognized in the intellectual field in France, as shown by his long running chron- icles in central newspapers such as Libération and Le Monde. In a profession that tends to be organized around policy making [Lebaron 2000; Fourcade 2009; Pouch 2008; Hirschman and Popp Berman 2014] rather than intellectual stances on public debates, Piketty’s position as an intellectual in France is quite original, and yet not as completely isolated. Others, such as Philippe Aghion and Daniel Cohen in France or, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz in the US, frequently take part in public debates. Moreover, in France, the field of public intellectuals tends to be dominated by non- academic thinkers, who vindicate a philosophical background.1 x 1 This is especially true of the “New philosophers,” who came to fame in the mid-1970s. While they gained considerable visibility through the heavy use of broadcast media (most notably television) and the frequent production of best-selling essays, the “New philosophers” (among which one counts such thinkers as Bernard-Henri Levy and André Glucksmann) retained little legitimacy from the more autonomous, academic-based part of the intellectual fields [Christofferson 2004]. 2 Sociologica, 1/2017 In this paper, we demonstrate how the reception of Capital in the Twenty-First Century enabled its author to gain new visibility as an intellectual, on an internation- al level. The first four sections of the article aim to define Piketty’s position in the field of economics and in the French intellectual field before the publication of Cap- ital in Twenty-First Century. In doing so, we intend to outline the long term social dynamics in which the production and the reception of Capital in Twenty-First Cen- tury is entangled: long before this book, Thomas Piketty was indeed already a dom- inant economist and a well-established intellectual in France with strong ties to the French political field, as well as to the American academic field due to his having been assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) early in his career. The symbolic and social capital that Piketty accumulated throughout his career was then invested in the making of Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The last sections focus on the dynamics of internationalization by looking at the trends in media citations in several countries. We then show that the United-States function as the central instance of certification in the making of an international intellectual figure. 2. Part 1: The Economist Made Intellectual 2.1. Thomas Piketty in the Field of Economists According to Frédéric Lebaron’s sociology of French economists [Lebaron 2000 and 2005], Thomas Piketty holds a dominant position at the spiritual pole of the field. That is, his authority as an economist mostly derives from the ac- cumulation of scientific capital and peer recognition in the academic side of the discipline. He is then differentiated from those who retain little scientific legit- imacy, have led their career mostly outside academia, and depend on various forms of economic (many corporate companies, especially in the finance sector, now have a department for economic studies) or political power (for example, the once powerful economic section of the French Communist Party [Monneau 2016]). To this extent, whereas a wider audience discovered Piketty’s work on eco- nomic inequalities through Capital in Twenty-First Century and its media cover- age, the French economist was already a prominent figure in his discipline, highly and frequently cited in economics journals. According to the IDEAS citation in- dex, Thomas Piketty ranks sixth among French economists (first is Nobel Prize holder Jean Tirole). Professor at (and the first director of) the Paris School of Economics – the most cited economics French institution according to IDEAS – Thomas Piketty’s central position in the French field of economics is partly – if 3 Brissaud and Chahsiche, How to Become an International Intellectual? not mostly – due to the international capital he has accumulated throughout his career.2 Since the second half of the Twentieth century, the intellectual and institutional centre of economics has been located in the US, which provides most of the dominat- ing academic institutions, consecrated scholars, such as the vast majority of econom- ics Nobel Prize winners, and the most prominent scientific journals in the discipline [Lebaron 2002]. Marion Fourcade thus suggests that, in the economic profession, credentials (such as diplomas, teaching and research positions) acquired in the US and, to a lesser extent, in Europe, potentially have universal value, which means that they can be invested and rewarded outside of the country, the region or the profession that first issued them [Fourcade 2006, 152]. Strongly linked with the economic and political domination of the US, the rise of American economics as the centre of the discipline means that the top academic institutions, journals and economists in the US hold the same position in other national fields.3 In this respect, locating Thomas Piketty in the field of economists must take into account the peculiar sociology of the economics discipline. Frequently claimed to be the most advanced discipline among social sciences in terms of internationalization [Gingras 2002], economics is more accurately one of the most centralized disciplines, which means that national fields tend to be more dependant on the centre – here the U.S.